Issue with form flowing properly

[commalliance]

I am having the hardest time trying to get this flowed form to work properly, and what I mean by that is that I have a form with 2 subforms > flowed top to bottom on each page.  the flowing of the subforms work, but none of the form is pushing the content below down further, whether its fields in the 2nd subform or fields outside the subforms, and I have tried a number of things but i am not sure where I am going wrong.  I have tried putting everything in a single subform on each page, but with trying to break up each of the 13 'objectives' that I have, the only way I knew how to do that is with adding top and bottom margins, which didn't work, especially on a page break.  Also, there were a few fields that i wanted to stay at the bottom of one of the pages, but then the fields would just expand over it, so that was not an option.  I tried to make the second subform positioned, which i read to try to do if you have multiple subforms on a single page.  I tried adding those stationary fields to its own subform, but that didnt work, and I just need some help please

Is there someone that can please help me out with my issue?

Here is the link to my form:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IhqYohf9osTJ8ZueAJBqjDH7H48WVp65/view?usp=sharing

[MHWinter · Accepted solution]

As a general suggestion, I would highly recommend you watch some tutorials on LiveCycle/AEM Designer as there are lots of features that are tricky to figure by yourself and the Adobe documentation tends to be overwhelming considering both its extensive coverage, and its conciseness. They are still very helpful when you have a clue of what you are looking for. Here is the link to these (somewhat hard to find) documents I refer to all the time:

- Using Designer: https://helpx.adobe.com/pdf/aem-forms/6-3/using-designer.pdf 

- Scripting Basics: https://helpx.adobe.com/content/dam/help/en/experience-manager/6-5/forms/pdf/scripting-basics.pdf

- Scripting Reference: https://helpx.adobe.com/pdf/aem-forms/6-3/scripting-reference.pdf

- Designer Samples: https://helpx.adobe.com/pdf/aem-forms/6-3/designer-samples.pdf

- Designer Quick Start Tutorials: https://helpx.adobe.com/pdf/aem-forms/6-3/designer-quickstart.pdf 

I personally found the series of recordings by True Tech Troubleshooting super helpful (see https://www.truetechtroubleshooting.com/). See for instance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vENVQbQvMCM on How Making Your Form Flow.

regarding your form, I would recommend the following:

1. since you want the form to flow, the Page-level subform needs to be flowed. the fields in the top part of your form can be placed in a subform within that flowed Page. Make sure that the Page level and other flowed subform accept page break (unless you want a subform to sytematically remain as a block).

2. since you typically have a variable number of KPIs to be recorded in your form, you could set object1 subform as repeatable, with buttons to add or remove instances. (Note that the script for the calculation of the overal average would be affected by that change. You would then be able to remove page2 thru page7 from your form.

3. It looks like the end part of your form is appropriately set as positioned... unless you don't was to limit the size of the text fields and allow them to expand.

Good luck!

[MHWinter]

see Modified form 

[commalliance]

thank you that last youtube link was great help, all of those parts are helpful. 

I have another question for you as an issue I am having.  so I have left page1 alone, and I modified page 2 by switching the page object to flowed western, and then each of my two subforms to flowed western, and I also removed some test that was outside in between both subforms and put a small margin to separate them.  It looks like I anticipate in designer, so I saved it and then previewed the form, but page2 still looks like before with the added text, and a huge margin between the two, and the fields overlap if they grow big enough.

I'm not sure why this happened, but as a test I created another page, and just copied and pasted the subforms from page2, changed the testpage to flowed western, saved it, but when i previewed the form, now page2 is displaying how i want with the change I made, however the testpage displayed as the other pages, makes no sense to me, screenshots below.  Any idea what is going on?  I even saved again, closed the file, and reopened it and still same thing.  Did I not do something correctly?

Link to file:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/143UNIj5JOJQgpg8Pm1sto12Eo7SgY7_8/view?usp=sharing

[MHWinter]

Sorry It looks like in the preview, it displays only one of the 2 pages (page2 or test page) … not sure why. so the second page you see in your screenshot is page3 which is still set as positioned, hence the overlapping. 

[commalliance]

So, I understand what you are saying, but that's not my issue. My issue and will attach another screenshot from designer is that I have page1, which is set to positioned, then page2 is set to flowed, as well as both subforms, then i added a testpage between page2 and page3.

page2 and testpage, are exact copies of eachother.  as I was going to test out the repeating subforms concept, so i left the rest of the pages alone for now, but as you can see there seems to be a glitch.  I opened the form in Adobe DC Pro, and same display as in preview.  what could be going on??  Also, if i were to delete the 'testpage' page, page2 goes back to displaying like the rest of the other pages, which are all set to positioned.

Does that help explain whats going on?

page1, page2, testpage

page1, page2, testpage

[MHWinter]

The pages you see on your screenshot are Page1, testpage and Page2:

Page2 is hidden due to the following script

pmp::docReady - (JavaScript, client)
Page2.presence = "hidden";

To see Page2, remove that script

[radzmar]

Well, this is very bad style. There's no need to use scriptings to set the initial presence of objects. It also has two disadvantenges: If the user has no scriptings disabled the form has a wrong layout and the initial scriptings always "dirties" the form, so the user is always prompted to save changes even if he didn't change anything in the form-  If you want something to be hidden in the first place, set it this way in Designer.

[commalliance]

@radzmarthank you for your reply as I was testing to to learn how the coding differed from Acrobat forms, as I am still strengthening my javascript knowledge.

Anyways, once I get the layout of my form corrected, for simplicity and time sake, I am just going to set the initial presence of page 2 - 6 to hidden, and then use buttons to set the presence of each page.  i know I know I can setup the subforms to repeat to a certain max, which would be cleaner, however, that would mean changing my calculation script, and a few other tasks, like dynamically adding a number to each "Objective" as well, and I am just not there with my skills yet.  I would like to do this, so once I learn how to do that I will tweak the form, unless you could give me some pointers on how to accomplish this?

[commalliance]

@MHWinterthank you as I had forgotten I had put that there when i was trying to do a test when I was first developing the form.